When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stood before the United Nations General Assembly on September 22 and called for the deletion of the UN Charter’s so-called “enemy state clauses,” she presented the demand as part of a broader effort to modernize an institution created in the aftermath of World War II. Tokyo argues that the provisions are obsolete, pointing to a 2005 General Assembly resolution that called for their removal and to Japan’s decades-long participation in the UN system.

But the controversy is not really about a few archaic words buried in an 81-year-old document.

It is about history, power and the direction in which Japan is moving.

China has seized on precisely that point. On September 28, Chinese Deputy Permanent Representative Sun Lei used his right of reply at the General Assembly to reject Tokyo’s appeal, arguing that Japan’s military transformation makes the historical provisions relevant once again. He pointed to rising defense spending, relaxed restrictions on weapons exports, the development and deployment of longer-range strike capabilities, and moves toward constitutional and security-policy changes.

The confrontation exposes a deeper contradiction at the heart of East Asian geopolitics: Japan wants the international community to recognize the country it has become since 1945, while China insists that Japan cannot separate that identity from the country it was before 1945.

That disagreement is unlikely to disappear by deleting three references from the Charter.

The “enemy state clauses” originated in the postwar settlement and appear in Articles 53, 77 and 107. They were designed around the circumstances of the defeated Axis powers, including Japan and Germany. Their practical significance has long been disputed, and the General Assembly adopted resolutions in 1995 and 2005 recognizing the provisions as........

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